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Old 10-29-2010, 07:11 PM   #91
Mgellis
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Flushing, Michigan
Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk View Post
Oh, and thanks Ze for the brain-eating egg-laying head-spiders. I'm sure I'll sleep like a babe tonight.
Now, now...calm down, already. They don't eat your brain. They lay eggs in your brain. It's the babies that eat your brain.

Happy dreams. :)
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Old 10-29-2010, 07:48 PM   #92
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by combatmedic View Post
I'm mildly amused by folks who think that we will one day create not just minds but souls by stringing electrical widgets together.
I believe I included an exception for the supernatural. Of course, I don't believe in souls, but if they existed, it would be possible that AIs can't have them.
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Old 10-29-2010, 07:56 PM   #93
Johnny1A.2
 
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
You don't have to invoke supernatural forces merely biochemical processes. The brain seems increasing "analog" rather than "digital" and does a lot things with really complex chemical and mechanical interactions.
Nobody has the slightest idea how 'consciousness' works, or can even meaningfully define it. If you listen to the neurologists and other students of brain function, you rapidly realize that they're still at the 'gather data and compare' stage, all hypothesis about the basic nature of mind are currently guesswork and little more.

To say that biochemistry is sufficient is guesswork. Likewise, citing superntural forces is also at this stage mostly meaningless, we appear to be like medieval sages trying to figure out how a nuclear reactor works. We don't even know the right questions to ask yet.

I chose the nuclear reactor model for a reason, to a student in, say, 1299 (the High Middle Ages) a fission reactor might as well be supernatural, would talk of particles like electrons and protons, orders of magnitude too small to perceive directly, interacting by means of electrical 'forces', and also by a 'strong force' that never impinges on the sensory world, and being simultaneously a wave and a particle and having a 'location' that can be said to be spread over a region until you measure it, be any less 'supernatural' than talk of spirits in the fuel mass?

Oh, and yes, the reactor does turn one kind of metal into other materials, but no, it's not alchemy...well, depending on how you define alchemy...no, it's not cursed, but yes, you will die if you stand inside this circle around the reactor, from no visible form of harm...

Sometimes, the only currently scientifically meaningful description of a process is "nobody knows how it works'.
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Old 10-29-2010, 08:15 PM   #94
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
It doesn't just apply to games, but to all speculative fiction. People who can accept magic spells should be able to accept anything.
Depends on what the spell does, and the context.
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Old 10-29-2010, 08:25 PM   #95
Johnny1A.2
 
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
I believe I included an exception for the supernatural. Of course, I don't believe in souls, but if they existed, it would be possible that AIs can't have them.
Even if they don't, it might turn out that the phenomena underlying consciousness are uniquely biological, even if purely mechanistic.

To use my 'fission reactor in 1299' analogy again:

"We duplicated the machine, everything is exactly the same except the metal the sorceror used, but lead is almost the same density, almost the same weight, there MUST be a way to make this work with some other metal than this 'uranium'."

In fact, they could try endless variations of metals that seem superficially like uranium (assuming they had access to them), even metals from uranium's column on the periodic table, and it's just not gonna work, even if they somehow managed to duplicate the machinery. Heck, not only do they have to have uranium, but they have to have 'special magic uranium', i.e. U-235 or U-233. Imagine trying to even explain what the difference is to someone with their frame of reference.

When you can't even define the phenomenon you're trying to duplicate, you're off the bad start at figuring out what you can and can't do. Maybe AI is impossible, or maybe it can be done on the proper electronic system...or maybe it can only be done on organic, protein-based hardware. Or maybe it requires something as totally outside our frame of reference as neutrons and gamma rays would be to someone in 1299. We just don't know.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 10-29-2010 at 08:39 PM.
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Old 10-29-2010, 08:40 PM   #96
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
Even if they don't, it might turn out that the phenomena underlying consciousness are uniquely biological, even if purely mechanistic.
No, it wouldn't, unless you assume there's something supernatural about life.
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Old 10-29-2010, 08:48 PM   #97
Johnny1A.2
 
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
No, it wouldn't, unless you assume there's something supernatural about life.
'Supernatural' is a meaningless word in this context.
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Old 10-29-2010, 10:54 PM   #98
teviet
 
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
1e12 neurons and 1e22 synapses, if I recall correctly, it's one of those things where researchers in biological neurology update the estimate of how the brain works, though some textbooks are behind the curve, and then random computer guys write a bunch of new articles on how much memory and flop requirements are required for an emulation.
Hmm, a few orders of magnitude discrepancy there. A few times 1e14 is the latest estimate I can find. 1e22 is approaching the number of atoms in the brain, and I can't believe that every single atom is a significant factor in defining our behaviour.

Anthony estimates 10 bytes per synapse; it's about 5 just to index which neuron it connects to, and that's probably an overestimate because gray matter neurons mostly connect short-range. But then the placement of the synapse relative to the cell body may have some significance, and each synapse can be excitatory or inhibitory, and each cell has its own action potential threshold and rate of fire, so a total of 10 bytes per synapse may be about right

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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
'Supernatural' is a meaningless word in this context.
I think in this context "supernatural" means that there is some undiscovered fundamental law of nature that is significant in how the brain operates. There is no compelling evidence of this: neurons really seem to obey ordinary everyday rules of chemistry. "Quantum computing" is sometimes invoked but that is neither necessary nor plausible to explain what the brain does: as eminent consciousness researcher Christoph Koch once put it, the brain would make a lousy quantum computer because it is quite thoroughly entangled with its environment. The brain has to be robust enough to operate reliably in a 310K thermal bath, which pretty much rules out most exotic physics and quantum woo, and rules in conventional chemistry.

In all humility we might be completely and entirely deluded about how everything works, but that's not a very useful working hypothesis.

Oh wait, the thread's about spiders...

I love 'em! I'd definitely play a silk-spinning brain-egg-laying PC. And the centipede's adorable too. My wife's also fond of spiders but terrified of snakes, go figure...

TeV
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Old 10-30-2010, 12:29 AM   #99
lwcamp
 
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
and less sensible than being scared of a gopher snake, which at least can deliver a bite, though it's not poisonous or particularly inclined to bite.
I used to keep gopher snakes as pets. Now I will say right off the bat that their bites don't even hurt, although they do draw pinpricks of blood. The worst a gopher snake ever did to me was when I was feeding a hatchling, no bigger around than a pencil. It mistook my finger for a mouse and started constricting. At first I thought I'd wait, and it would get bored and let go. Nope. My finger started losing circulation. It swelled up and started turning purple. Enough was enough, I tried to get it off. No go. Here I am, a 6 foot 4 inch guy in good physical shape, unable to pry a teensy little snake off my finger. Meanwhile, my finger is turning purpler. Eventually I did manage to get it off, with no permanent harm, but it was quite amazing how hard the little guy could hold on.

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Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
We don't have gopher snakes, but we do have some sort of (non poisonous) black water snake, and of course garter snakes, both of which have little tiny teeth but will nip if harassed.
At this point I will bring up

Toxicon Volume 19, Issue 6, 1981, Pages 831-839
The toxic Duvernoy's secretion of the wandering garter snake, Thamnophis elegans vagrans
Darwin K. Vest

Abstract

The Duvernoy's secretion of the wandering garter snake (Thamnophis elegans vagrans) is highly toxic to mice, causing marked hemorrhaging in the lungs, diaphragm, mesentery and stomach lining, as well as mild local hemorrhaging. Systemic hemorrhaging was most pronounced in mice receiving doses approximating the p. ld50, while doses two times the ld50 or greater produced massive hermorrhaging in the lungs and diaphragm only. Local extravasations were directly proportional to dose. Oral secretions other than Duvernoy's secretion failed to produce lethal effects in mice challenged with doses up to 7 times the ld50 of Duvernoy's secretion. A micro-aspiration techniques for the collection of Duvernoy's secretion from colubrid snakes is described, and liquid as well as dried secretion yields for Thamnophis elegans vagrans are presented.

and

Clinical Toxicology, Volume 18, Number 5 (1981)
Envenomation Following the Bite of a Wandering Garter Snake (Thamnophis elegans vagrans)
Darwin K. Vest

In some sense, the second article listed here was my first academic publication. Not as author, but as subject. In the article is a photograph of my 9 year old hand, puffy and swollen from the venom injected by a garter snake bite. The symptoms subsided after about three days, and disappeared after a week, but in the meantime my hand turned all sorts of interesting colors and ached quite a bit.

I had been out catching snakes in the horse pasture behind our house, found one, grabbed it, and it grabbed me in return. I had been bitten many times before, so I didn't panic. Instead, I set out for the water trough (an old bathtub sitting in the marshy area) so I could stick its head underwater so that it would let go. In the meantime, it hung on and chewed. That was a mistake - just letting it go probably would have made it let go as well, and garter snakes do not have a very effective venom deliver mechanism - the only way they can get venom into the wound is if they hang on and chew. By the time I got home my hand was doing its polychromatic swelling routine. Mom panicked and, in desperation, called the local university. By an amazing coincidence, she got ahold of a graduate student who was doing his doctoral work on the toxic properties of garter snake venom. I think the quote was "Your son was envenomated by a garter snake Mrs. Campbell? That's great! Err, I mean I'll be right over ...". At the time, I was one of only two people on record to have been envenomated by a garter snake, and the first guy declined to be interviewed.

So, it is a fun story to tell, but for all practical purposes they are harmless and you can pretty much just leave them alone without fear of anything bad happening to you.

Luke
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Old 10-30-2010, 01:14 AM   #100
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Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

Ya learn something new every day. So Garter snakes are venomous?
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